Mitch McConnell Wants to Bury the Mueller Report, Of Course
One thing that would help Americans struggling to divine the Mueller report's conclusions from Attorney General William Barr's inscrutable, dubiously reasoned summary is, of course, the chance to look at the report themselves. If Mitch McConnell gets his way, no one other than Barr and Mueller will be able to do so anytime soon.
"The special counsel and the Justice Department ought to be allowed to finish their work in a professional manner," he said on Tuesday, explaining his decision to block Senator Chuck Schumer's non-binding Senate resolution calling for the report's public release. "To date, the attorney general has followed through on his commitments to Congress. One of those commitments is that he intends to release as much information as possible."
McConnell is correct to note Barr's obligation to redact details about confidential grand jury proceedings, for example, or information pertinent to other, still-active law enforcement investigations. What this argument omits is that the resolution didn't call for the Mueller report to be released immediately—it just called for its release. When a baffled Schumer pointed this out, McConnell regurgitated the same talking point, asserting that after two years of uncertainty, "it's not unreasonable to give the special counsel and the Justice Department just a little time to complete their review in a professional and responsible manner." Again, the fact that Democrats were not claiming otherwise seems not to have bothered him.
Schumer's scuttled resolution comes on the heels of one that the House, before Mueller's report was even complete, passed earlier this month by a 420-0 margin. Republicans did some performative grumbling that it was an unnecessary step, but nonetheless lent their support on the grounds that it would keep Democrats from endlessly floating conspiracy theories about the report's suppression. Even MAGA drones like Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, last seen using Twitter to threaten witnesses prior to his testimony against the president, could only bring himself to vote "present."
It wasn't the first time a Senate version failed. In mid-March, Lindsey Graham blocked an earlier version after Schumer refused to tack on an amendment that would have asked Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate, of all things, Hillary Clinton's e-mail server. "Any American out there who did what Secretary Clinton did, you'd be in jail now," Graham declared at the time. "We let Mueller look at all things Trump-related, collusion and otherwise. Somebody needs to look at what happened on the other side." On Monday, Schumer tried again, characterizing the resolution as "a simple request for transparency." This time, it was McConnell who prevented it from going anywhere.
The language of Barr's letter suggests that Mueller found at least some evidence that the president may have obstructed justice. "While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime," the special counsel writes, "it also does not exonerate him." It would thus behoove Mitch McConnell, whose fondness for voter suppression and stealing Supreme Court seats (among many other things) makes clear that he views public service as a tool for accumulating power, to hide evidence of a Republican president's wrongdoing for as long as possible. But a more foundational aspect of the report might also be behind McConnell's objections to its release: It outlines "the Russian effort to influence the election and...crimes committed by persons associated with the Russian government in connection with those efforts."
In the fall of 2016, as the American intelligence community issued increasingly dire warnings about Russia's democracy-destroying activities, President Barack Obama asked McConnell to join him in issuing a public, bipartisan condemnation of this ongoing cyber-warfare campaign. Yet McConnell refused, expressing skepticism about the underlying intelligence and implicitly accusing the Obama administration of engaging in eleventh-hour partisan maneuvering. After further negotiations, congressional leaders instead ended up issuing a meek warning about the dangers of election hacking; the word "Russia" is nowhere to be found in it. The Mueller report is unflattering for McConnell, in other words, because it affirms facts he chose to conceal from the public—a choice that ultimately helped swing the election to Donald Trump.
Incredibly, on the Senate floor on Monday, McConnell blamed President Obama for not taking action against the Russia threat earlier, carefully omitting his role in making sure the American people didn't learn of it from their government until after Election Day was over.
It is deeply disturbing that the Obama administration was apparently insufficiently prepared to anticipate and counter these Russian threats. It was hardly a secret prior to November 2016 that Putin’s Russia was not and is not our friend. And yet, for years, the previous administration ignored, excused, and failed to confront Putin’s malign activities at home and abroad.
None of this is to suggest that the majority leader really gives a shit about being exposed for the umpteenth time as a morally bankrupt cynic. But as 2020 draws nearer, his efforts to bury the Mueller report are a useful reminder that when presented with the opportunity to decide between the good of the country and partisan politics, he happily chose the latter—and is now making the same choice again without a second thought. If he has to fabricate some bullshit excuse about timing, so be it. Mitch McConnell has done worse things before, in full view of everyone, and he comes out unscathed every time.
